2/27/2006 @ 12:00AM

Foul Ball

Major League Baseball will hold the first World Baseball Classic in March, a 16-country tournament that will feature some of the game’s biggest stars. The goal: to spread the game internationally, where MLB generates only 3% of its $4.7 billion in revenue. So why, closer to home, is baseball preparing for a battle with its most loyal customers–7 million fantasy baseball players?

Fantasy baseball has sports fans competing on paper with one another over the course of a season using the real-life performances of players. The lifeblood is player statistics, which people scour to draft and trade players to form the best teams. The top finishers typically split the entry fees as a prize.

At issue in this contest: Can Major League Baseball restrict the use of those statistics in fantasy games? Last year the league sold to fantasy baseball providers 18 licenses that gave them the right to use the statistics. But this year MLB raised the minimum license fee to $2 million from $25,000, pricing out some 100 providers below the likes of ESPN and Yahoo. One company fighting back is CBC Distribution & Marketing, which runs CDM Fantasy Sports. It filed a suit in federal court in Missouri last year after being denied a license.

The legal question involves the right of publicity that attaches to player statistics. The stats are readily available, but if a player is used to sell a product, he’s owed a fee. CDM and many fantasy providers don’t use images of the players, says CDM lawyer Rudolph Telscher.

Legal jockeying aside, it might seem odd that MLB is willing to alienate its most loyal fan base. Fantasy players subscribe to satellite service packages and watch the games that no one else cares about. On the other hand, MLB, which won’t comment, dreams of taking its Internet arm public in a deal valuing the company at $3 billion. It doesn’t need competitors.